Westlake Score and Review: Murder Among Children (Mitch Tobin #2) by Tucker Coe, alias Donald E. Westlake (Souvenir Press, 1968)

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.

Let's take a detour from the signed editions for the moment and return to the novels Donald E. Westlake wrote under the nom de plume Tucker Coe in the 1960s and '70s, all of which star disgraced former cop Mitchell Tobin. I reviewed the first of those, 1966's Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, a couple of weeks ago, adding its 1967 British Souvenir Press dust jacket – designed by S. R. Boldero – to my Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery, and I'll be doing the same with this latest Westlake Score: the scarce 1968 Souvenir Press first edition of the second Coe/Tobin book, Murder Among Children, which again features a striking Boldero cover, this time one that, to my knowledge, has never been seen online before...

Originally published in the States by Random House in 1967, Murder Among Children finds Mitch Tobin still at a loose end, still building his symbolic-but-also-quite-concrete wall around his back yard, still unwilling to rejoin the world a year on from inadvertently causing the death of his partner and consequently getting thrown off the force. Once again it's Mitch's wife, Kate, who urges him into action, this time to assist a female cousin, Robin, whose West Village coffee house is being targeted by a corrupt policeman. But when Mitch arrives at the coffee house, he finds Robin covered in blood and clutching a knife, and a dead man and woman in a room upstairs. And so, even more reluctantly, and at the behest of another of the coffee shop's owners, a young black man named Hulmer Fass (and at the behest of Kate), Mitch agrees to look into the crime, as the bodies begin piling up...

As with Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, one of the chief draws of Murder Among Children is the selection of interesting characters Westlake populates the story with. Hulmer Fass especially I found an agreeable companion – smart, witty and hip – as indeed does Mitch, for whom Hulmer becomes a kind of unofficial sidekick. And of course Mitch himself is as intriguing as before; although he does less soul-searching than in the first book, his powers of observation are as acute as ever, except coloured by his own situation and, let's face it, depression. At one point he watches Hulmer walking away down the street... 

...youthful, optimistic, humorous, bouncing on the balls of his feet, I found myself envying him in half a dozen different ways. I envied his youth, of course, and his optimism, and his humor, and I envied the absence of scars on his psyche that made the youth and optimism and humor possible. But beyond that I envied him for being young now, and black, and alive to the world in a way that I had not been for years, in a way that I perhaps had never been in my life.

That sense of the now (or rather the then-now) is evident throughout the book. Westlake paints a vivid picture of a New York sweltering under a summer heatwave: shirts drenched with sweat; the cooling relief of air conditioning. And there's an escalating tension, too, as Mitch has a brush with death on a tenement stairwell, and then towards the close of the novel becomes a suspect for the murders himself. In the end, he's offered an olive branch by a police captain, along with a glimmer of hope of a wiping clean of his slate, and even, perhaps, a return to his former life as a cop. But Mitch knows that's a delusion, and as in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, all he wants to do at the finish is get back to building his wall.

The back cover of the Souvenir Press edition of Murder Among Children carries British reviews of Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, the fourth one down of which caught my eye. It's credited to the Oxford Mail, which means it's almost certainly by spy novelist Anthony Price, who, as he explained in the interview I conducted with him last year, was reviewing crime fiction for the Mail around this period. It's nice to find that an author for whom I have a great deal of respect enjoyed Westlake's work – even if he probably didn't know it was by Westlake – and makes me wonder if Price reviewed any others of Westlake's novels. And oddly enough, after Murder Among Children, in the 1970s the remaining three Mitch Tobin novels would be published in the UK by Gollancz – the same publisher that was home to Price's David Audley novels in the '70s and '80s.

S. R. Boldero's dust jacket for Murder Among Children has now joined his other wrappers in the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery – and I've another, lovelier Westlake wrapper waiting in the wings, this time from an earlier novel, penned under Westlake's own name, and which to my mind is one of the best things he ever wrote. Look out for that – and an attendant review – next week. Next though: it's back to the signed editions, with another graphic novel published this very year...

The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart (Graphic Novel, Oni Press, 2012): Signed and Dedicated Edition

From a signed and dedicated (to me) copy of the Harvey Award-nominated Alan Moore: Storyteller, next in this series of posts on signed editions we turn to a signed and dedicated (again, to me... kind of...) copy of a graphic novel:

Published by Oni Press in May of this year, The Coldest City is British writer Antony Johnston and British expat artist Sam Hart's comics take on a John le Carré-style espionage novel. Set largely in Berlin just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it follows MI6 operative Lorraine Broughton as she's sent to the city to recover a list of names of every agent at large in the area, which has been lost following the death of a British spy. Once there, she's met by head of station David Percevel, an agent of the old school who objects to a woman being sent to "his" city, and who proves as obstructive as he is helpful. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and Lorraine is soon caught up in a web of intrigue and violence, with hidden agendas and double-crosses aplenty.

Johnston already had form with spy thrillers prior to The Coldest City: in 2005 he wrote a fine three issue miniseries spin-off from Greg Rucka's excellent Queen & Country comic (Queen & Country: Declassified), an experience which inspired him to pen more spy fiction. I believe I heard about The Coldest City via Double O Section, and given my passion for all things espionage, naturally I snapped a copy up from Dave's Comics in Brighton when it was published. But as I was paying for the graphic novel, the man behind the till mentioned that Antony would be signing copies at the shop that weekend, and if I left my copy, he'd sign my one.

So I left the book behind with a note of my name, and later tweeted Antony in an excitable fashion telling him I was looking forward to getting my signed copy – which prompted him to point out to me that in fact he would be signing the weekend after the one I'd been led to believe, and which in turn meant I wouldn't get to read the damn thing for nearly two weeks. Arse. However, I did discover that Antony was already familiar with Existential Ennui, and the delay gave me the opportunity to to pop back into Dave's and amend the note I left inside the graphic novel, with the net result that Mr. Johnston kindly scrawled this on the front endpaper:

There we have it: the first book ever to be dedicated to Existential Ennui. And I couldn't have asked for a more appropriate one either: it covers two areas of my interests – comics and spy fiction – and more importantly it's really rather good – low key, murkily evocative of the era, and with a nice twist in the tail.

And I've another signed graphic novel to showcase before moving on to some signed books of the non-comics variety – although there may well be a Westlake Score ahead of that...

The Harvey Award-Nominated Alan Moore: Storyteller by Gary Spencer Millidge (Ilex Press, 2011): Signed and Dedicated Edition

Following on from that signed first edition of Jack Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed, I thought we could take a look at some of the other signed books I've acquired since this series of posts ended in September 2011 (although there have been one or two – actually make that three or four... or even five – signed editions in the interim). And let's begin with a book in which I myself had a hand, and which has recently been nominated for a Harvey Award:

Namely, Alan Moore: Storyteller, by Gary Spencer Millidge, a terrific tome which I edited it in my capacity as managing editor at Ilex Press in Lewes. I blogged about it in July of last year when it was published, but later that month we held a signing for the book at Gosh Comics in London (which moved premises shortly after; it's now on Soho's Berwick Street), attended by both Gary and Alan – and indeed by a few Ilex staffers, myself included. Under those circumstances, it would have been remiss off me not to get a copy signed for myself, which is precisely what I did:

Splendid stuff. As I mentioned above, Alan Moore: Storyteller was nominated for a Harvey Award a couple of weeks ago, the winners of said awards to be announced at the Baltimore Comic-Con on 8 September. Previously Ilex won a Harvey for Helen McCarthy's The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, and I reckon we're in with a shout of bagging another one for Alan Moore: Storyteller – assuming, of course, comics professionals – the ballot is only open to those who work within the comics industry – get off their bums and vote for the damn thing (needless to say, if you're a comics professional, I'd be eternally grateful if you could head to the Harvey Awards website and vote for the book before the ballot closes on 17 August).

Gary has blogged about how much it means to him to be nominated, to which I'd add that it means quite a lot to me too, for reasons I outlined in a post on the Ilex blog last year. I was fairly pleased with what I wrote back then, so, rather than go over the same ground again, I figured I might as well republish that post here on Existential Ennui, not only for posterity's sake but because it accurately – albeit somewhat prolixly – summarizes the impact Moore and his work has had on my life and, perhaps, gives some small indication of the passion and commitment that went into Alan Moore: Storyteller (not least from Gary). You can read the piece in full below, and I'll be back in a bit with some more signed editions – graphic novels, appropriately enough – and a Westlake Score-and-review...

. . . . . . . . . .

Alan Moore: Storyteller: A Dream of Flying

NB: Originally published on the Ilex Press blog, July 2011.

You might have noticed over the past few months that we’ve been blogging fairly relentlessly – incessantly, even – about a certain book named Alan Moore: Storyteller. We’ve posted an excerpt from fantasy legend Michael Moorcock’s foreword to the book; added a link to the book’s author, Gary Spencer Millidge’s own thoughts on Storyteller, and posted a series of clips of Mr. Millidge in conversation with Ilex’s own Tim Pilcher at May’s Bristol Comic Expo; got very excited about the internet buzz that’s been building on the book; got even more excited about the imminent signing session for the book at London’s Gosh! comic shop; and even, courtesy of Ilex’s Vasiliki Machaira, presented a quite startling art installation created out of proofs of the thing. And those are just some of the Moore missives we’ve posted in the run-up to publication this week; take a saunter through the rest of this blog for further entries.

The reason there’s been so much frantic Alan Moore activity on the Ilex blog is because, quite simply, Alan Moore: Storyteller is an extraordinary work, and an important book not just for Ilex but for the comics field in general. It’s the most comprehensive, most sumptuously illustrated authorized biography yet published on Alan Moore’s life and career. You’ll be able to see that for yourselves as it hits bookshop shelves and online retailers this week – both in the UK and, via Rizzoli, the US – and I could spend an eternity extolling its virtues, such as the surprising and intriguing CD of songs and performances by Moore and friends that accompanies the book; or the never-before-seen, unpublished V for Vendetta script included as a double-gatefold; or the little-seen, legendary Big Numbers chart, which details how that groundbreaking uncompleted series would have played out over its full twelve issues; or the behind-the-scenes family snaps and notebooks and sketches that Mr. Moore kindly made available to Gary; or, indeed, Gary’s words, which, with the aid of copious quotes from Alan, paint a vivid picture of the man behind such towering achievements as Watchmen, Lost Girls and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

But rather than do that, to celebrate the publication of Alan Moore: Storyteller, I thought I’d do something that readers of my personal books blog, Existential Ennui, have become more than familiar with; something that I find eminently easy to do; something, in fact – some would say ad infinitum, perhaps even ad nauseum – I never seem to tire of doing: I thought I’d talk about myself.

See, the publication of Alan Moore: Storyteller is, for me, the culmination of a decades-long love affair with Alan Moore’s comics. It’s a fascination that began nearly thirty years ago, in March 1982, when, without any kind of fanfare, a comics magazine called Warrior appeared in British newsagents. I can still recall the exact newsagent in which I purchased that first issue of Warrior: it was on Elmers End Road in Beckenham, south London; I think it’s still there – the newsagent, I mean, not the single copy of Warrior #1 that was sitting on its magazine racks; I bought that. With so many milestones in the comics medium since then – a good number penned by Mr. Moore himself – it’s easy to forget how revolutionary that first black-and-white issue of Warrior seemed. But revolutionary it was: an anthology comics title in the best tradition of British comics publishing, but quite unlike any seen before.

The garish cover of Warrior #1 was exciting enough. Drawn by Steve Dillon, it featured a cyborg with what looked like a meat cleaver on one arm; an incredibly sexy woman wielding a gigantic futuristic rifle; and a sidebar promising a sword-brandishing priest, a bizarre Guy Fawkes lookalike and a silhouetted superhero. Under that cover I was soon thrilling to the adventures of Axel Pressbutton and Laser Eraser, Father Shandor, Demon Stalker and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s peerless V for Vendetta. I’d never seen anything like these comics tales, and was shaken to my twelve-year-old core by the mature, complex writing and artwork on display.

But the story that really blew my tiny young mind was the lead one, a short tale entitled “A Dream of Flying”. Written by Moore and illustrated by Garry Leach, in just eight pages it detailed the rebirth of a superhero of whom I’d never even heard. In the story, a tired, middle-aged newspaper journalist, Mike Moran, plagued by headaches and by unlikely dreams of being a super-powered hero, goes to cover the opening of a nuclear power plant in the Lake District. The event is hijacked by terrorists, and in the midst of the ensuing chaos Moran remembers a word he’s been trying to recall, a word that, for some reason, holds a strange significance for him. Uttering the word – “kimota” – he’s transformed in a blinding flash of light and a crack of thunder into a young, muscled man possessed of incredible abilities and dressed in a form-hugging costume. Besting the terrorists with a clap of his hands, he bursts through the roof of the facility and rockets into space, shouting out his now-remembered name: “I’m Marvelman… I’m back!”

What was remarkable about this story was how real it all seemed. To a twelve-year-old kid raised on the larger-than-life, bombastic adventures of Spider-Man, Moore’s naturalistic dialogue and poetic captions and Leach’s meticulous, wonderfully authentic artwork were a revelation. Prior to reading that first instalment of Marvelman – eventually published in colour as Miracleman in the States – the edgiest comics I’d come across were those contained in the weekly sci-fi anthology 2000 AD. Indeed, I’d doubtless already read some of Moore’s other work in that title, without his name having properly registered.

But “A Dream of Flying” was something else. The first page of the story, showing the terrorists driving towards the nuclear plant in a lorry, remains for me the single page that paved the way to discovering a more grown-up, more nuanced style of comics storytelling. Essentially, all that first page of “A Dream of Flying” is is two blokes bantering in the cab of a truck. But more than the visual spectacle that followed, more than the bullets bouncing off Marvelman’s raised hand, moreso even than the image of him circling the Earth at the close of the episode, for me that one page opened up the possibilites of the comics form: just two men, talking rubbish, the one a bit alarmed by the other, in a manner that was all the more astonishing for how low key and… ordinary it was.

Alan Moore would go on to craft infinitely more elegant stretches of dialogue, countless sentences and scenes that, examined with an older, more critical eye, far surpass the nascent, occasionally awkward stylings of his debut episode of Marvelman. But “A Dream of Flying” – and particularly that first page – will always be special to me. Despite the fact that it was a story about a superhero, it was my gateway to comics that weren’t about superheroes – comics like Fast Fiction, or Escape, or Eightball, or such future Moore masterpieces as Swamp Thing and From Hell – and a doorway to the names behind those comics, to creators who had little to do with the superhero genre: Eddie Campbell, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware; hundreds of others. It was the story that would, in time, lead to me working in the comics and graphic novels industry myself – first at Titan Books, now at Ilex – and then eventually, inexorably, to my editing Alan Moore: Storyteller, a book of which I am immensely proud.

Whether Alan Moore: Storyteller would have appeared if I hadn’t come to work at Ilex, I really couldn’t say. (Yeah, OK Tim: it probably would have.) But what I can say for certain is that without Alan Moore and Garry Leach’s “A Dream of Flying”, I wouldn’t have ended up editing Alan Moore: Storyteller. And so in a way – at least for me – a near-thirty year circle is now…

…complete.

Further Beautiful British Book Covers: Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra, Clement Richer's Ti-Coyo and His Shark, and Rosemary Timperley's A Dread of Burning

Before we get into those promised signed editions – and let me tell you I have all manner of intriguing signed books lined up, from non-fiction to fiction to graphic novels – I thought I'd take the opportunity to add some more covers to the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery. Almost all of the books in this batch were bought either in or near Lewes, with the exception of a lovely Val Biro wrapper, which was scanned and sent to me by Mike Ripley, who, you'll no doubt recall, kindly supplied a number of other splendid book jackets back in April.

Let's take a look at my most recent acquisition first:

A 1963 Collins hardback first edition/first impression of Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra, which I found in the Lewes branch of Oxfam just the other day (note price sticker still affixed to back). I wrote about MacLean over three weeks ago, when I posted the first missive in my just-completed series on books which begat perhaps more famous films – that post being on Where Eagles Dare, the Ian Robertson-designed wrapper of which has also now joined the Beautiful British Book Jacket gallery. Ice Station Zebra was itself turned into a film – which I don't believe I've seen – directed by John Sturges, who himself cropped up at the end of the books-which-begat-perhaps-more-famous-films series in relation to The Eagle Has Landed (and who, as I mentioned then, also directed one of my favourite-ever films, Hour of the Gun). The jacket of the Collins edition was designed by John Heseltine, an artist and illustrator known for his royal portraits.

Then there's this book, which I came across in one of Lewes' many and varied antique shops:

Ti-Coyo and His Shark, by French writer Clement Richer, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1951. The jacket on this one was designed by Evadne Rowan, who also illustrated wrappers for James Leasor's The Monday Story and Nikolay Gogol's Dead Souls, among many other books. I haven't read Ti-Coyo yet, and I may not even keep it, but I liked the cover enough to put down a couple of quid so I could add it to the Beautiful British Book Jackets. There's a review of the novella on the Time Magazine site, the full version of which I can't access because I'm not a subscriber, but handily this copy of the book came with its own contemporaneous review enclosed, clipped from The Times:

I've also added to the gallery two dust jackets for Graham Greene novels: Lacey Everett's wrapper for the 1961 Heinemann first of A Burnt-Out Case – rephotographed from its original appearance as a Lewes Book Fair find back in January of last year – and the wrapper of the 1955 Heinemann first of The Quiet American, also rephotographed from its original appearance as a Lewes Bookshop Bargain in March of last year. The jacket design of the latter is uncredited, but it bears the signature BGS at bottom right of the front cover; I've not been able to determine who that is, so I've placed the wrapper with the designers whose surnames begin with "S", on the assumption that the "S" denotes a surname (if you know who BGS is/was, do please leave a comment). And of course there's this, courtesy of Mike Ripley:

Val Biro's exquisite wrapper for Rosemary Timperley's A Dread of Burning, published by James Barrie in 1956. Timperley's debut novel, this is really rather a scarce book: there's currently only one copy on AbeBooks, and that's lacking its dust jacket.

All of those, plus the S. R. Boldero jacket for Donald E. "Tucker Coe" Westlake's Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death that I added on Monday, bring the total number of covers on the page up to 80. And there are plenty more to come, both from Val Biro, from Westlake (two very nice, little-seen wrappers from his books), and from others besides. Before those, though, let's get stuck into the signed editions, with a book in which I personally had a hand, and which has just been nominated for a Harvey Award...

The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins; the Original Novel (Collins, 1975): Book Review, Basis for the 1976 Movie

After an unscheduled but necessary Donald E. Westlake interlude (necessary because it allowed me to finish reading the novel I'm about to discuss), let's have the final book which begat a perhaps more famous film. And having begun this series of posts (over three weeks ago now) with a World War II-set a tale with an "Eagle" in its title of a daring raid by a squad of British (and one American) troops, I'm ending it with a World War II-set tale with an "Eagle" in its title of a daring raid by a squad of German (and one British) troops. Moreover, seeing as this is the grand finale of this series (for which I'm sure, by this point, we're all immensely grateful), I've managed to secure a copy of the first edition of the novel that's really quite remarkable...

First published in the UK by Collins in 1975 under a dust jacket illustrated by Barry Glynn, Jack Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed didn't have long to wait to be filmed: the eponymous movie adaptation, directed by John Sturges – the final film of his stellar directing career (highlights including The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral, and one of my favourite movies of all time, the sort-of-sequel to Gunfight, the excellent Hour of the Gun) – arrived in cinemas the following year, starring Michael Caine as Lieutenant-Colonel Kurt Steiner, Robert Duvall as Colonel Radl and Donald Sutherland as Liam Devlin.

Like Where Eagles Dare, The Eagle Has Landed is one of those terrific war films I'm always happy to watch when it pops up on telly on a Saturday afternoon. It's perfectly cast (Caine, Duvall and Sutherland all brilliantly personifying their respective characters – plus it's got Jenny Agutter in it, a woman who holds a special place in the hearts – and loins – of men of a certain age), nicely scripted (by Tom Mankiewicz), and of course solidly directed by Sturges. But the best thing about it is the story, and that's down to Higgins. With only minor differences – the removal of a character and subplot or two in the film – both book and movie follow the same trajectory: a plan is hatched by Himmler to either kidnap or kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, the Germans learn from Joanna Grey, a spy living in the (fictional) Norfolk village of Studley Constable, will be staying with the local lord of the manor. Tasked with planning and carrying out this mission are Radl, Steiner – along with what remains of Steiner's paratroop assault group after having fought on the Eastern Front and then being assigned in disgrace (following a bust-up with the SS) to the Channel Islands – and Devlin, an IRA man resident in Berlin.

The planning actually takes up two-thirds of the novel, Higgins rattling through the final incursion into Studley Constable, its subsequent collapse after one of the German paratroopers rescues two kids who've fallen under the watermill, and consequent firefight with an American Ranger unit at a breathless pace. But both parts of the book are splendidly written – not especially stylishly, but populated with memorable, well-drawn characters and penned with the gusto of an author who knows he has a cracking yarn on his hands. That said, a yarn isn't how Higgins presents the tale: his Author's Note at the start claims that "at least fifty per cent of it is documented historical fact", while a framing device sees Higgins himself visiting Studley Constable in the then-present day, researching a magazine article and inadvertently uncovering Steiner's story.

Higgins wrote a belated sequel to The Eagle Has Landed, The Eagle Has Flown (1991), which apparently reveals that a protagonist who dies at the end of the original novel in fact didn't (I've got a copy on my shelves still waiting to be read); he also featured Liam Devlin in a handful of other novels. As for first editions of The Eagle Has Landed, those aren't exactly scarce – AbeBooks currently has around fifty listed – but my copy is unusual, in that it bears a signed Jack Higgins bookplate:

I know of only one other signed copy of The Eagle Has Landed in any edition – another Collins first, again bearing a bookplate, and offered by an American dealer for over £350, which is a hell of a lot more than I paid for mine.

And there'll be more signed editions on Existential Ennui shortly, after some further additions to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s...

Book Review: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (Mitch Tobin #1) by Tucker Coe, alias Donald E. Westlake (Souvenir Press, 1967)

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.

Slight change of plan here: I had intended to blog about the final book which begat a perhaps more famous film to start the working week, but unfortunately I haven't finished reading the bloody thing yet; you'll have to hang on another day or so for that. Instead, while we wait, I thought I'd veer off-topic and take a look at a novel that I showcased as a Westlake Score all the way back in September 2010 – in its 1967 UK Souvenir Press first edition – but never got round to reviewing – or indeed showing off properly, as the photographs I took of the book back then were fairly awful. And having since established my Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery, and the jacket of this particular edition having been designed by an artist who's already in the gallery – S. R. Boldero – it struck me I could kill two birds with one stone... well actually, three: review the novel, add to the gallery, and fill an unexpected hole in Existential Ennui's schedule...

Originally published in the US in 1966, Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death was Donald E. Westlake's first novel under the alias of Tucker Coe, under which moniker he would go on to pen a further four books over the next five years or so. All star disgraced former cop Mitchell Tobin, who, as the series opens, has been off the force for six months following an illicit affair which led to the death of his partner. Mitch's wife, Kate, forgave him the affair (although he's unsure if his thirteen-year old son, Bill, has), but his former colleagues haven't forgiven him the death of his partner – and nor, for that matter has he forgiven himself, which is why he's spent six months doing virtually nothing other than, latterly, building a wall around his backyard.

So when a representative of New York mobster Ernie Rembek turns up at Mitch's house with a job offer, Mitch eventually – reluctantly – agrees – not because he has any interest in the job – which is to find out who within Rembek's organisation murdered Rembek's mistress – but because Kate thinks it will be good for him to do something other than build his wall. And so, attended by Roger Kerrigan – "an observer from the corporation", as Rembek puts it – Mitch sets about interviewing and eliminating suspects, in the process becoming a target for murder himself...

I must admit I was surprised by how good Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death is. Alongside the Parker novels – written, of course, under Westlake's rather better-known nom de plume of Richard Stark – I'd suggest that Kinds of Love is one of the best books Westlake wrote in the 1960s: a restrained yet quietly gripping murder mystery that's all the better for its sober, unshowy approach. Ordinarily my interest in mysteries is minimal – often as not I couldn't care less "whodunnit" – but Kinds of Love transcends its mystery trappings by dint of its fascinating take on mob life, which Westlake depicts as unrelentingly unglamorous. To take just one example, during an interview with one of the mobster suspects, Frank Donner, it arises that Donner and his wife have separate bedrooms, a detail that Mitch finds suspicious. But the explanation proves so mundane it becomes even more believable: Donner's wife admits with embarrassment that she snores.

For his part, Ernie Rembek is an unusual mob boss: he's intelligent and cultured, at one point referencing G. K. Chesterton in relation to overlooking background players in any investigation (a sly nod from Westlake to an influence, there). But each of the gangsters is well-drawn, Westlake-via-Tobin appraising each of them dispassionately – appraising everything dispassionately, in fact – deploying the occasional simile to add colour: noting how the glaring sun makes he and two other men lower their heads "like a trio of penitents", or describing a body, "its arms stretched out ahead of it", as "an acrobat still reaching for the trapeze".

Of course, Mitch's dispassion is a symptom of his lack of interest in pretty much everyone and everything – something that, conversely, serves to make him more interesting as a character – with the exception of his family and his wall, the latter of which he's back to building by the close of the novel. "Mitch, didn't it change anything?" Kate asks him of his investigation. "Change what?" is Tobin's blunt response, suggesting he has a long way yet to travel over the subsequent novels.

S. R. Boldero's wrapper for the Souvenir Press edition of Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death has now joined his one for Desmond Cory's Johnny Goes South in the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design gallery, taking the total number of covers up to 74. And I'll be adding another couple of Westlake dust jackets before too long, one of which, the British edition of the second Tucker Coe novel, I believe has never been seen online before. Next though: the final book which begat a perhaps more famous film...